Glossaries

Create and edit a glossary

A glossary is the container for a set of related terms. You create one before you add any terms, and most teams keep one glossary per business domain.

In the app: Business Context › Glossaries

Before you start

  • Glossary titles must be unique within your organization, and can’t contain a comma.
  • Your organization must not be in read-only mode. See Account states and read-only mode.

Create a glossary

  1. Go to Business Context › Glossaries.
  2. Click Add Glossary. If your organization has no glossaries yet, click Create First Glossary instead.
  3. Enter a Title (required, up to 250 characters).
  4. Optionally enter a Description (up to 4,000 characters). It shows under the title on the Glossaries page and on the glossary’s detail page.
  5. Click Create.

The new glossary appears on the Glossaries page with a 0 terms badge.

[screenshot]
The Create Glossary dialog with a title and description filled in.

Open a glossary

Click the glossary’s title on the Glossaries page. The detail page shows:

  • A header row with the term count, who last modified the glossary, and when.
  • An Attribute Groups button, covered below.
  • The Info tab, with the glossary’s DESCRIPTION and its TERMS.

The TERMS section lists the glossary’s terms as a tree: child terms sit indented under their parent, and you can collapse a branch. Use Filter terms... and All statuses to narrow the list. Click a term to open it.

The actions along the top of the Info tab are:

Button What it does
Add Term Opens the Create Term dialog. See Define a term.
Glossary Extractor Suggests terms from a document. See Extract glossary terms from documents.
Export Downloads this glossary as JSON or CSV. See Import and export a glossary.
Edit Glossary Changes the title and description.
Delete Glossary Deletes the glossary and everything in it.
[screenshot]
A glossary detail page: the metadata row, the action buttons, and the term tree with one branch expanded.

Edit the title or description

  1. Open the glossary and click Edit Glossary. From the Glossaries page, you can also click the pencil icon on the glossary’s card.
  2. Change the Title or Description.
  3. Click Save.

Choose attribute groups for the glossary’s terms

Attribute groups add your own structured fields to terms. A glossary decides which groups its terms get.

  1. Open the glossary and click Attribute Groups.
  2. Turn the Assigned switch on for each group you want. The change saves as soon as you flip the switch.

Every term in this glossary then shows those attributes on its Attributes tab. If the dialog says no attribute groups exist, create them first on Governance › Attributes. See Apply attribute values on glossary terms.

Delete a glossary

  1. Open the glossary and click Delete Glossary. From the Glossaries page, you can also click the trash icon on the glossary’s card.
  2. Confirm:
    • For an empty glossary, click Delete in the confirmation.
    • For a glossary with terms, the dialog tells you how many terms and term relationships will be deleted. Type the glossary’s title exactly, then click Delete Glossary.

Warning: Deleting a glossary permanently removes every term in it and the relationships between those terms. You can’t undo it from Kenseme. Export the glossary first if you might want it back.

Organize several glossaries

You can have as many glossaries as you need. Two patterns work well:

  • By domain: Finance, Sales, Operations. Each domain team owns its glossary.
  • By audience: an engineering glossary and an executive glossary.

Because term names are unique across the organization, the same word can’t be defined twice in two glossaries. When two domains use one word differently, name the terms apart (“Customer (Billing)”, “Customer (Support)”) and link them as related terms.